A prominent Muslim advisor at the Obama Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has close ties to a convicted Hamas fundraiser and other radical Islamist causes, including a nonprofit that proclaims sharia is the only legitimate law according to Islam.

Incredibly, this Homeland Security advisor, Mohamed Elibiary, has regular access to classified information and is a prime mover behind two of the Obama administration’s most dangerous policies; normalizing relations with domestic and foreign Islamist groups (including the Muslim Brotherhood) and arduous enforcement restrictions of laws related to material support for terrorism.

While this may seem incomprehensible to many, it’s all documented in a disturbing report published this week by the Center for Security Policy, a Washington D.C. think tank dedicated to promoting national security. The 33-page document is actually based on a lengthy, five-part interview with Elibiary, an influential member of Obama’s Homeland Security Advisory Council.

Elibiary admits he’s a longtime friend of a self-described Islamist (Shukri Abu Baker) convicted in 2008 of financing the terrorist organization Hamas through his U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entity, the Holy Land Foundation. Elibiary reveals that he donated to the Holy Land Foundation monthly until it was shut down by the U.S. government and he defends Baker, depicting his prosecution as a case of political persecution.

He also admits knowing the Muslim Brotherhood “social network” and supports a partnership with Islamists, particularly the Muslim Brotherhood in the U.S. and abroad. “I simply find it counterproductive to American national security interests to treat the Muslim Brotherhood like the mafia, Nazi party, fascists, communists or any other entity we politically ostracize,” Elibiary says. He adds that Muslim Brotherhood members “naturally exist everywhere at this point, but that’s not a problem in and of itself because there have been MB members inside the US abiding by the law for a very long time.”

The document includes a number of alarming details of Elibiary’s close relationship with a wide array of U.S. Islamist groups, including the radical Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America which declares that the only legitimate law according to Islam is Sharia. The group also urges American Muslims to nurture hostility towards U.S. law, according to Arabic documents discovered and translated into English by the Center for Security Policy.

As troubling as this may seem, Elibiary wields tremendous power in national security issues, promoting a narrative that the Muslim brotherhood and other Islamists are moderates. He has also worked to purge even the most basic information about the doctrinal drivers of terrorism from U.S. government training materials. The root cause of terrorism and Islamic extremism is not the Islamist ideology but legitimate gripes against Western policy, Elibiary insists in the interview.

When former Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced Elibiary’s DHS appointment in 2010 Judicial Watch reported that he was a backer of the Ayatollah Khomeini and a well-known Egyptian jihadist named Sayyid Qutb. In fact, Elibiary participated in a tribute to Khomeini, the ruthless Iranian revolutionary whose teachings continue to govern Middle Eastern terrorist organizations like Al Qaeda. Last year JW reported that Elibiary leaked classified documents to a media outlet that had declined to do a story supposedly exposing DHS’s promotion of “Islamophobia.”

Judicial Watch, Inc., a conservative, non-partisan educational foundation, promotes transparency, accountability and integrity in government, politics and the law. Through its educational endeavors, Judicial Watch advocates high standards of ethics and morality in our nation's public life and seeks to ensure that political and judicial officials do not abuse the powers entrusted to them by the American people. Judicial Watch fulfills its educational mission through litigation, investigations, and public outreach.